[letstrynvm]

Fast buses operate at some multiple of a reference clock wired up to both sides, it's often 1/2 or 1/8th of the actual data rate which each side arrives at by feeding the reference clock to an on-die pll.

This can create ambiguity in which bit of the 2 or 8 or whatever is on the bus, and temperature, board design, bus length, humidity etc change the phase where the best sampling place is for the data signal. So there is 'training' to test which fine delay between the receiver pll clock and the data gives the lowest error rate when used to sample the incoming data. Periodically some buses must pause and do retraining to account for, eg, temperature changes.

[wiz21c]

That seems so awfully analogue... :-/

[letstrynvm]

It is... underneath all that shiny logical digital it's analogue all the way down in any real implementation.

[akimball]

Pace Fredkin.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

It's hardware:) At that level, "digital" electronics... aren't.